Roy Montgomery is one of the great masters of do-it-yourself rock music.
From his base in New Zealand, the secluded artist has recorded an impressive
number of albums almost always achieving stunning sounds. His recent
endeavour, And Now The Rain Sounds Like Life Is Falling Down Through It
(Drunken Fish, 1998) ranks atong his best.

Would you like to briefly comment on each of the albums of your career?
Let's start with the Dadamah album, which remains a seminal work of avant-rock.
"The Dadamah album I look back upon as an exercise in weaving tunes
into cacophony. The other members of the band had the energy and
enthusiasm for experimentation and I had the "hooks", to put it
crudely. I thought the common ground for us in Dadamah was that
terrain occupied by Pere Ubu and the Red Crayola in their debut
records, so I think I had that always at the back of my mind in
trying write tunes to go with the words and ideas of the other
members."

After that album, Montgomery started his solo career. He published two
instrumental albums whose style is hard to define, somewhere between
psychedelia and folk:
Scenes From The South Island (Drunken Fish, 1995) and
Temple IV (Kranky, 1996).
"Scenes" and "Temple IV" I regard as bound up together in terms of
learning to use the 4-track and experimenting with one guitar and
some "found objects" i.e., effects boxes that were lying around. Also,
both were done around the same time and reflect a very introspective
few months spent alone in a New York apartment. Both were
opportunities to release stored memories, images and emotions."

Then Dissolve was born. A collaboration with guitarist Chris Heaphy,
That That Is (Kranky, 1995) was saluted as a major event in the realm
of instrumental guitar music.
Third Album For The Sun (Kranky, 1997) fared even better.
What role do Dissolve have in your career?
"I think Dissolve has been something like a pleasant pastime for two
primitive guitarists with a lot in common in terms of what they
listened to in their younger days. It probably doesn't emerge so much
on the recordings that have been released, but basically we have fun
when we get together. It's like two people who were really influenced
by Wire jamming I guess. There is some material on a forthcoming
Kranky album which shows us spontaneously playing around. The album
is called "True" and is half solo, half Roy Montgomery and Chris
Heaphy, and was recorded for a theatre production of that name."

What prompted you to cut a solo album, after Dissolve and Has Jar Tempo?
"Without wishing to to be too analytical, I think growing up as an
only child tends to reinforce the idea of doing things alone, so for
me it is quite normal to think in terms of solo work. There are times
when I like working with other people, but there are times when I
have to shut myself off from others completely and work on my own."
"And now the Rain" was more like processing feelings in real time.
Also, I was trying, not very significantly in hindsight, to broaden my
instrumentation horizons somewhat, particularly through the use of
piano. A lack of any training made things much harder than I had
imagined."

When did you start writing material for this album?
"I started and finished the work within about three weeks, Christmas
and New Year of 1997/1998. I had very little time to prepare, so did
not sketch things out at all in advance, nor did I record anymore
than what appeared on the CD i.e., I did not record several hours
worth of material."

In Our Own Time sounds like one of those arab/indian litanies...?
What are the lyrics about?
"The lyrics are musings on my likely relationship with my
very young son as he grows up. It's about your influence upon other
minds and the point at which you part company. I think psychologists
call it "individuation" (well they did in the old days)."

Down From That Hill And Up To The Pond
also has an exotic flavor to it... sources? Also, very psychedelic,
hypnotic: what are the sounds here? is there a loop?
"Believe it or not I was thinking about the first few Led Zep LPs,
but it was really a piece for the members of Bardo Pond to enjoy.
Three six string guitar tracks, one with e-bow effect, plus a piano
pounding the bass notes if I recall correctly. I never do loops.
Everything is played in real time."

Kafka Was Correct... nice title.. what was he right about? The nasal
drones remind me of Tibet...
"I'm tempted to say he was right about "existence" but that would
sound too pessimistic. I find his writing very amusing, and I was
thinking about two stories in particular: "the Metamorphosis" and "At
the Gates of the Law" (these no doubt have radically different titles
in Italian)."

So definitely an eastern influence on this album?
"Not totally, but I think the e-bow pulled everything in that direction."

Entertaining Mr Jones,
reminds me a little bit of ancient folk ballads, but I still hear
an indian influence? Is it just me?
"It is just you or whatever you've been smoking... I thought since the
subject matter was English i.e., Brian then it was OK to go the
"ancient folk ballad" way as you put it."

The Small Sleeper:
I called this one "petite dissonant chamber music": do you like it?
What do you like about composing pieces like this? The timbres? the mood?
"Yes, good description. I guess I like composing little mood pieces,
especially with someone specific in mind. This one was a kind of
lullaby for my son."

Algeria: why Algeria? This doesn't sound very arabic to me... It sounds just very extreme psychedelic music
"It's somewhere I've never been and a lot of blood has been spilled
there. Must be those drugs..."

A Little Soundtrack is very powerful: is it the piano that plays the
melody in the background? What did you do to the guitar to make it sound this
way? What else is in the background?
"No, although I would swear myself that there is a piano in the
background pounding out an excuse for a melody. Just four lanes of
six-string guitar played through a guitar effects processor i.e.,
jazzed-up fuzzbox."

Ill At Home
is a masterpiece. The guitars simulate drums? What do the lyrics talk about?
How did you come up with this composition? Truly kakfian...
"Thank you. Yes, guitars do the percussion. The song is a hybrid of
Kafka, Dostoevsky and Goncharov (the latter known only for a novel
about someone who took a hundred pages or so to get out of
bed:"Oblomov"). I suppose it tries to capture that feeling when the
everything seems to be collapsing in upon you, no matter what you try
and do to break out of it. I don't know why I did that one to be
honest."

In Another Time:
there's one Montgomery the composer of avantgarde instrumental music
and one Montgomery the composer of Eastern-tinged songs?
"Maybe. I guess there is some sort of dual character to my writing.
I've just recorded another instrumental solo album, but it sounds
more, ahem, "Scottish" than eastern to my ears. I use a Farfisa organ
quite lot on this one. There is also another Hash Jar album due soon
on which I play treated organ rather than guitar. Later in the year a
compilation of singles with vocals will be released, which will make
some people happy and others very annoyed."

You often omit drums from your albums, including this one: why?
"Correct. You can't do drums purely on headphones and I don't have time
for drum machines or hi-tech percussion gadgets."